Erica Landsberg

Erica Landsberg is an honors graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School. She served on the University of Chicago Law Review, interned at the Office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and worked in the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, where she tried an employment discrimination case before the Illinois Human Rights Department. After law school, she served as law clerk for the Hon. Paul E. Plunkett in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and worked as an associate in commercial litigation and corporate reorganization at Sidley and Austin in Chicago. She then became Assistant General Counsel for the University of Chicago. More recently, she served as a Special Assistant Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago, handling appeals in over 50 cases. Landsberg began teaching at the University of Kansas School of Law in 2002 with a small section of torts and has been teaching antitrust law at KU for nine years.

A seminar focused on the unique legal issues facing colleges and universities. The over 4000 institutions of higher education in the United States require legal services, especially as law schools fight suits alleging they misrepresented job prospects to students and the Supreme Court rules on landmark affirmative action cases such as Fisher v. University of Texas (now returning to the Court after remand). The course will explore academic freedom, tenure, and student rights and discipline, issues that distinguish institutions of higher education from other corporate entities. Consideration will be given to distinctions between public and private institutions. Grades will be based on three memoranda that students will research and write, and on class participation. LEC.